Some lawyers become judges and disappear from public notice. Not so Eugene Hyman, who took controversial stands during his last years on the Santa Clara County Superior Court bench. Same goes now that he’s retired.

In a 44-page article just published in the Santa Clara Law Review, Hyman focuses on what he and scholars call the “Scarlet eLetter.”

The term doesn’t refer to the fictional disgrace of the adulterous Hester Prynne in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel, but to the all-too-real, as he put it, “scarlet criminal record that endures with equal stigma.”

According to the federal charges, Russian operatives spread pro-Trump and anti-Clinton propaganda. They posed as Americans to coordinate and infiltrate political activities. They organized grass roots rallies. They paid for a cage large enough to hold an actress impersonating Clinton in a prison uniform.

The indictment shows a concerted years-long effort by a group dedicated to undermining the American political system. It shows the scale of that effort, eventually involving 80 staff in St. Petersburg, a budget of more than a million dollars a month, hundreds of social media accounts, stolen identities of American citizens – and even visits into the United States by...